Aftermath

ago? A few others since.”

“I heard about them, yes, but I thought you just had to be careful about your body temperature when you were dancing. You know, like, drink plenty of water and be careful you don’t dehydrate.”

“That’s only one of the dangers. Did you give her the inhaler again when she became worse out on the moor?”

“We couldn’t find it. It must have been back in the car, in her bag. Besides, it had only made her worse.”

Banks remembered viewing the contents of Leanne’s shoulder bag and seeing the inhaler there among her personal items, doubting that she would have run away without it.

“Didn’t it also cross your mind that she might have been choking on her own vomit?” he went on.

“I don’t know, I never really…”

“What did you do?”

“That’s just it. We didn’t know what to do. We just tried to give her some breathing space, some air, you know, but all of a sudden she sort of twitched, and after that she didn’t move at all.”

Banks let the silence stretch for a few moments, conscious only of their breathing and the soft electric hum of the tape machines.

“Why didn’t you take her to the hospital?” he asked.

“It was too late! I told you. She was dead.”

“You were certain of that?”

“Yes. We checked her pulse, felt for a heartbeat, tried to see if she was breathing, but there was nothing. She was dead. It all happened so quickly. I mean, we were feeling the E, too, we were panicking a bit, not thinking clearly.”

Banks knew of at least three other recent Ecstasy-related deaths in the region, so Blair’s account didn’t surprise him too much. MDMA, short for methylenedioxymethamphetamine, was a popular drug with young people because it was cheap and kept you going all night at raves and clubs. It was believed to be safe, though Mick was right that you had to be careful about your water intake and body temperature, but it could also be particularly dangerous to people suffering from high blood pressure or asthma, like Leanne.

“Why didn’t you take her to a hospital when you were all still in the car?”

“Ian said she’d be okay if we just got out and walked around for a while. He said he’d seen that kind of reaction before.”

“What did you do then, after you discovered she was dead?”

“Ian said we couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, that we’d all go to jail.”

“So what did you do?”

“We carried her further out on the moor and buried her. I mean, there was a sort of sinkhole, not very deep, by a bit of broken-down drystone wall, so we put her in there and we covered her up with stones and bracken. Nobody could find her unless they were really looking, and there weren’t any public footpaths nearby. Even the animals couldn’t get to her. It was so desolate, the middle of nowhere.”

“And then?”

“Then we drove back to Eastvale. We were all badly shaken up, but Ian said we ought to be seen about the place, you know, acting natural, as if things were normal.”

“And Leanne’s shoulder bag?”

“That was Ian’s idea. I mean, we’d all decided by then that we’d just say she left us outside the pub and set off home and that was the last we saw of her. I found her bag on the backseat of the car, and Ian said maybe if we dumped it in someone’s garden near the Old Ship, the police would think she’d been picked up by a pervert or something.”

And indeed we did, thought Banks. One simple, spur-of-the-moment action, added to two other missing girls whose bags had also been found close to the scenes of their disappearances, and the entire Chameleon task force had been created. But not in time to save Melissa Horrocks or Kimberley Myers. He felt sick and angry.

There was mile after mile of moorland up beyond Lyndgarth, Banks knew, none of it farmed. Blair was right about the isolation, too. Only the occasional rambler crossed it, and then usually by the well-marked paths. “Can you remember where you buried her?” he asked.

“I think so,” said Blair. “I don’t know about the exact spot, but within a couple of hundred yards. You’ll know it when you see the old wall.”

Banks looked at Winsome. “Get a search party together, would you, DC Jackman, and have young Mick here go out with them. Let me know the minute you find anything. And have Ian Scott and Sarah Francis picked up.”

Winsome stood up.

“That’ll do for now,” Banks said.

“What’ll happen to me?” Blair asked.

“I don’t know, Mick,” said Banks. “I honestly don’t know.”

19

The interview had gone well, Maggie thought as she walked out on to Portland Place. Behind her, Broadcasting House looked like the stern of a huge ocean liner. Inside, it had been a maze. She hadn’t known how anyone could find their way around, even if they had worked there for years. Thank the Lord the program’s researcher had met her in the lobby, then guided her through security to the entrails of the building.

It started to rain lightly, so Maggie ducked into Starbucks. Sitting on a stool by the counter that stretched along the front window, sipping her latte and watching the people outside wrestle with their umbrellas, she reviewed her day. It was after three o’clock in the afternoon and the rush hour already seemed to have begun. If it ever ended in London. The interview she had just given had focused almost entirely on the generalities of domestic abuse – things to watch out for, patterns to avoid falling into – rather than her own personal story, or that of her co-interviewee, an abused wife who had gone on to become a psychological counselor. They had exchanged addresses and phone numbers and agreed to get in touch, then the woman had had to dash off to give another interview.

Lunch with Sally, the art director, had gone well, too. They had eaten at a rather expensive Italian restaurant near Victoria Station, and Sally had looked over the sketches, making helpful suggestions here and there. Mostly, though, they had talked about recent events in Leeds, and Sally had shown only the natural curiosity that anyone who happened to live across the street from a serial killer might expect. Maggie had been evasive when questioned about Lucy.

Lucy. The poor woman. Maggie felt guilty for leaving her alone in that big house on The Hill, right opposite where the nightmare of her own life had recently come to a head. Lucy had said she would be okay, but was she just trying to put a brave face on things?

Maggie hadn’t been able to get tickets for the play she wanted to see. It was so popular it was sold out, even on a Wednesday. She thought she might book into the little hotel anyway and go to the cinema instead, but the more she thought about it, and the more she looked out at the hordes of passing strangers, the more she thought she ought to be there for Lucy.

What she would do, she decided, was wait till the rain stopped – it only looked like a mild shower, and she could already see some blue clouds in the sky over the Langham Hilton across the road – do some shopping on Oxford Street, and then head home in the early evening and surprise Lucy.

Maggie felt much better when she had decided to go home. After all, what was the point going to the cinema by herself when Lucy needed someone to talk to, someone to help take her mind off her problems and help her decide what to do with her future?

When the rain had stopped completely, Maggie drained her latte and set out. She would buy Lucy a little present, too, nothing expensive or ostentatious, but perhaps a bracelet or a necklace, something to mark her freedom. After all, as Lucy had said, the police had taken all her things and she didn’t want them back now; she was about to start a new life.

It was late in the afternoon when Banks got the call to drive out to the Wheaton Moor, north of Lyndgarth, and he took Winsome with him. She had done enough work on the Leanne Wray case to be there at the end. Most of the